7/10

Thomas Howard, the mind behind Orchid Mantis, has always trafficked in the textures of memory such as faded edges and a warped cassette hiss. But with 'Possession Pact', the Atlanta-based artist veers into new emotional terrain, trading bedroom-pop haze for something starker, heavier, and far more exposed.

This is Howard’s slowcore record, and he leans all the way into it. Echoing the patient weight of acts like Codeine and Bedhead, these songs unfold with a deliberate stillness, as if each note is trying to recall the shape of something once known and long buried. The once-prominent synths and ambient flourishes of his earlier catalogue give way to bare guitar figures and drum patterns that hover just above silence.

There’s a kind of spiritual exhaustion throughout 'Possession Pact', but it’s not defeatist in anyway. Rather, it’s an exploration of what happens after the unravelling; what’s left when you shed nostalgia’s rose tint and stare at the past without blinking. The lyrics oscillate between resignation and resilience: questioning whether anything matters, then finding something worth holding onto in the quiet aftermath.

Despite its sparse instrumentation, this is one of Howard’s densest works in terms of emotional weight. 'Possession Pact' lets the melancholy settle, and somehow finds beauty in the unresolved. For longtime fans of Orchid Mantis, this might feel like a left turn. But it’s also a natural evolution: a peeling back of layers, a shedding of artifice, a clearing of fog. In doing so, Thomas Howard has made his most direct work to date.